As promised, today I have a poem from the star of yesterday's piece, Charles Baudelaire.
This also presents an opportunity to examine an angle that has always interested me, and that I'll come back to whenever possible: translation. Baudelaire wrote primarily in French, as is the case with this poem, and whenever we read his work in English, we're actually reading a kind of de-facto collaboration, or in some cases we're actually reading the work of another poet, the translator. Here, for reference, is Baudelaire's original pseudo-sonnet, in French:
LE REVENANT
Comme les anges à l'oeil fauve,
Je reviendrai dans ton alcôve
Et vers toi glisserai sans bruit
Avec les ombres de la nuit;
Et je te donnerai, ma brune,
Des baisers froids comme la lune
Et des caresses de serpent
Autour d'une fosse rampant.
Quand viendra le matin livide,
Tu trouveras ma place vide,
Où jusqu'au soir il fera froid.
Comme d'autres par la tendresse,
Sur ta vie et sur ta jeunesse,
Moi, je veux régner par l'effroi.
— Charles Baudelaire
I know a piddling amount of French, but I could hardly claim to be able to make proper sense of his complex, poetic phrasing, certainly not enough to be able to read it as a poem and not a strenuous exercise. So we'll start with two translations from 1952 and 1954, respectively, that seem to be fairly literal, in a basic match-the-word sense. They seem closest to the actual French of those I found, with a few notable changes. Personally I prefer the first, by Roy Campbell, for its dedication to the meter and rhyme of the original and the form, and I believe the juxtaposition of the last lines in Aggeler's translation was ill-advised, and takes away the power of the last line. Campbell's is not without it's oddities, however ('brown delight,' anyone?).
THE GHOST
Like angels fierce and tawny-eyed,
Back to your chamber I will glide,
And noiselessly into your sight
Steal with the shadows of the night.
And I will bring you, brown delight,
Kisses as cold as lunar night
And the caresses of a snake
Revolving in a grave. At break
Of morning in its livid hue,
You'd find I had bequeathed to you
An empty place as cold as stone.
Others by tenderness and ruth
Would reign over your life and youth,
But I would rule by fear alone.
- trans. by Roy Campbell
THE GHOST
Like angels with wild beast's eyes
I shall return to your bedroom
And silently glide toward you
With the shadows of the night;
And, dark beauty, I shall give you
Kisses cold as the moon
And the caresses of a snake
That crawls around a grave.
When the livid morning comes,
You'll find my place empty,
And it will be cold there till night.
I wish to hold sway over
Your life and youth by fear,
As others do by tenderness.
- trans. by William Aggeler
But there's another style of translation, where the translating poet allows his or her own personality a freer reign over the writing, and the original work is thus transformed somehow by the will of the translator into a kind of collaborative poem, one poet's vision seen through the haze of another's. The following two translations are this kind of thing. The first is still similar in shape and rhythm to the original, but the translator demonstrates a much more colorful and idiosyncratic approach to choosing words and phrases (a grave becomes a cistern, 'phantom-wise,' etc). The second is even more of a break from the original. The four stanzas become two claustrophobic blocks of text, and the language is more urgent and ominous. It increases the effect of the poem quite nicely, but how much of that is Baudelaire, and how much is the translator?
THE REVENANT
Like angels with bright savage eyes
I will come treading phantom-wise
Hither where thou art wont to sleep,
Amid the shadows hollow and deep.
And I will give thee, my dark one,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
Caresses as of snakes that crawl
In circles round a cistern's wall.
When morning shows its livid face
There will be no-one in my place,
And a strange cold will settle here
Others, not knowing what thou art,
May think to reign upon thy heart
With tenderness; I trust to fear.
- trans. by George Dillon
THE GHOST
Like angels that have monster eyes,
Over your bedside I shall rise,
Gliding towards you silently
Across night's black immensity.
O darksome beauty, you shall swoon
At kisses colder than the moon
And fondlings like a snake's who coils
Sinuous round the grave he soils.
When livid morning breaks apace,
You shall find but an empty place,
Cold until night, and bleak, and drear:
As others do by tenderness,
So would I rule your youthfulness
By harsh immensities of fear.
- trans. by Jacques LeClercq
That's quite a bit of Baudelaire for one weekend. Tomorrow, something else.
This also presents an opportunity to examine an angle that has always interested me, and that I'll come back to whenever possible: translation. Baudelaire wrote primarily in French, as is the case with this poem, and whenever we read his work in English, we're actually reading a kind of de-facto collaboration, or in some cases we're actually reading the work of another poet, the translator. Here, for reference, is Baudelaire's original pseudo-sonnet, in French:
LE REVENANT
Comme les anges à l'oeil fauve,
Je reviendrai dans ton alcôve
Et vers toi glisserai sans bruit
Avec les ombres de la nuit;
Et je te donnerai, ma brune,
Des baisers froids comme la lune
Et des caresses de serpent
Autour d'une fosse rampant.
Quand viendra le matin livide,
Tu trouveras ma place vide,
Où jusqu'au soir il fera froid.
Comme d'autres par la tendresse,
Sur ta vie et sur ta jeunesse,
Moi, je veux régner par l'effroi.
— Charles Baudelaire
I know a piddling amount of French, but I could hardly claim to be able to make proper sense of his complex, poetic phrasing, certainly not enough to be able to read it as a poem and not a strenuous exercise. So we'll start with two translations from 1952 and 1954, respectively, that seem to be fairly literal, in a basic match-the-word sense. They seem closest to the actual French of those I found, with a few notable changes. Personally I prefer the first, by Roy Campbell, for its dedication to the meter and rhyme of the original and the form, and I believe the juxtaposition of the last lines in Aggeler's translation was ill-advised, and takes away the power of the last line. Campbell's is not without it's oddities, however ('brown delight,' anyone?).
THE GHOST
Like angels fierce and tawny-eyed,
Back to your chamber I will glide,
And noiselessly into your sight
Steal with the shadows of the night.
And I will bring you, brown delight,
Kisses as cold as lunar night
And the caresses of a snake
Revolving in a grave. At break
Of morning in its livid hue,
You'd find I had bequeathed to you
An empty place as cold as stone.
Others by tenderness and ruth
Would reign over your life and youth,
But I would rule by fear alone.
- trans. by Roy Campbell
THE GHOST
Like angels with wild beast's eyes
I shall return to your bedroom
And silently glide toward you
With the shadows of the night;
And, dark beauty, I shall give you
Kisses cold as the moon
And the caresses of a snake
That crawls around a grave.
When the livid morning comes,
You'll find my place empty,
And it will be cold there till night.
I wish to hold sway over
Your life and youth by fear,
As others do by tenderness.
- trans. by William Aggeler
But there's another style of translation, where the translating poet allows his or her own personality a freer reign over the writing, and the original work is thus transformed somehow by the will of the translator into a kind of collaborative poem, one poet's vision seen through the haze of another's. The following two translations are this kind of thing. The first is still similar in shape and rhythm to the original, but the translator demonstrates a much more colorful and idiosyncratic approach to choosing words and phrases (a grave becomes a cistern, 'phantom-wise,' etc). The second is even more of a break from the original. The four stanzas become two claustrophobic blocks of text, and the language is more urgent and ominous. It increases the effect of the poem quite nicely, but how much of that is Baudelaire, and how much is the translator?
THE REVENANT
Like angels with bright savage eyes
I will come treading phantom-wise
Hither where thou art wont to sleep,
Amid the shadows hollow and deep.
And I will give thee, my dark one,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
Caresses as of snakes that crawl
In circles round a cistern's wall.
When morning shows its livid face
There will be no-one in my place,
And a strange cold will settle here
Others, not knowing what thou art,
May think to reign upon thy heart
With tenderness; I trust to fear.
- trans. by George Dillon
THE GHOST
Like angels that have monster eyes,
Over your bedside I shall rise,
Gliding towards you silently
Across night's black immensity.
O darksome beauty, you shall swoon
At kisses colder than the moon
And fondlings like a snake's who coils
Sinuous round the grave he soils.
When livid morning breaks apace,
You shall find but an empty place,
Cold until night, and bleak, and drear:
As others do by tenderness,
So would I rule your youthfulness
By harsh immensities of fear.
- trans. by Jacques LeClercq
That's quite a bit of Baudelaire for one weekend. Tomorrow, something else.
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